An Old Story: Anti-Semitism, Past and Present

Every age begets the anti-Semitism best suited to it. And while the key emotion driving it may be a visceral hatred of Jews, the critical intellectual aim is to delegitimize them. In a spiritual age, the Jews are delegitimized spiritually. In early church polemics, they are deemed no longer worthy of their own Scriptures because they have failed to accept Christ as the Messiah – a message that justified almost 2,000 years of persecution, and was only halted through the courage of an enlightened papacy and like-minded Protestant churchmen.

Islam has shown two faces to the Jews, one benevolent, one less so. Mohammed welcomed both Jews and Christians to the new faith and saw them as teachers. His early dealings with them left a heritage by which they were treated as dhimmis, people who were at once protected and subservient. But the second chapter of the Koran, Al Baqarah, "the Cow," is suffused with injunctions against the Jews for rejecting Mohammed's mission.

Chastisement, in this case, is not only justified but divinely sanctioned, and it comes through the instruments of the Prophet's armies, who drive the Jewish tribes first from Medina and then altogether from the Hijaz – a campaign punctuated by assassination, broken pledges, massacre, and despoliation. Though not unusual by the standards of the time, the legacy seems to have persisted in alternating periods of persecution and tolerance through the following 1,400 years.

More recently, as faith gave way to materialism, anti-Semitism assumed a correspondingly secular mode, harnessing itself to the dominant ideologies of both the Left and the Right. The wave of nationalism that swept over Europe from the late-19th to the mid-20th centuries held as a tenet that the Jew was a priori an outsider, exploitive and subversive – a belief that ultimately led to their systematic exclusion and destruction.

The Left practiced its own brand of anti-Semitism. By simply turning xenophobia on its head – Socialist Nationalism – the Communists were able to attack their Jewish subjects as rootless cosmopolitans and class enemies. The terms of opprobrium were based on Marxism rather than fascism, but the intent was the same: to eradicate the Jews.

Durban

Now, in the era of post-colonialism, anti-Semitism has been cast in correspondingly post-colonial terms. A bracing example is the recent World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, which was commandeered by the Arab states and their allies as an occasion to both vilify Israel and dust off the old canard equating Zionism with racism – the sanitized, politically acceptable version of the ancient blood libel.

Putatively a forum to encourage tolerance, the meeting devolved into little more than a latter-day Nuremberg rally, with scurrilous attacks replacing torch-lit parades. Egyptian delegates, for instance, distributed booklets with swastikas, and pictures of Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping blood – items that would not have been out of place in Julius Streicher's Nazi party organ Der Sturmer.

Durban dusted off old canards equating Zionism with racism – a PC version of the ancient blood libel.

One would think that with all the ongoing oppression and injustice in the world, there would have been enough to keep the delegates at Durban busy. Muslim delegates concerned about rights in Palestine could have brought their enthusiasm closer to home by addressing the fate of black Christians being slaughtered and enslaved in the Sudan – where there have been a million deaths in the last 20 years – or the attempt to impose Islamic law on all subjects in northern Nigeria, or the oppression of the Berbers in Algeria, or the massacre of thousands of Kurds by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

One could also add, for good measure, the recurrent persecution of the Copts in Egypt, the theocratic excesses and treatment of women by the mullahs in Iran, the persecution of gays throughout the Arab world – and, of course, the fanatic intolerance of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And certainly, under the Durban conference's rubric of "Related Intolerance," it would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation, which makes one wonder whether their delegates should not have been more concerned about the rights of their own people before those of any other.

But given all these ripe opportunities to right human wrongs, what was the single situation that most obsessed the delegates at Durban? Palestine. How can this be? The answer, of course, is that the Arab representatives and their followers at Durban were not interested in the persecuted millions throughout the world (particularly in their own backyards); rather, they were fixed on a political agenda that distracted the world from their own serious shortcomings in the human-rights department, and focused on what they consider the West's last bastion in the third world: Israel. And the assault on Israel – whatever the disclaimers of its apologists – has become indistinguishable, by the reckoning of its own zealots, with an attack on Jews everywhere.

Attacking Israel

The critical tactic in carrying out an anti-Semitic agenda is to attack the Jewish people at its strong point – where, ironically, it is both most exposed and most vulnerable. In the Middle Ages and beyond, the target was the Court Jew who had the ear of the ruler; during the Inquisition it was the Cristianos Nuevos – the Spanish Jews who had thrived after their conversion to Christianity. Under Hitler it was the entrepreneurial and professional classes who were the first victims of Nazi boycotts and exclusion. And today it is Israel, the most powerful symbol of Jewish national resurgence in two millennia.

Arab Propoganda

The most striking analogy between the current Arab onslaught and its fascist precedents is the use of propaganda. Like Goebbels, its practitioners have learned the efficacy of 1) the Big Lie (the more outrageous the better), brazenly repeated so that people will ultimately accept it as at least part of the truth; 2) hijacking the language and symbols of the enemy so that you tar them with your vices; 3) trivializing and muddling the very meaning of words, so that your transgressions can be blurred and your opponent's responses magnified.

Two key tactics in advancing this agenda are moral equivalence – for instance, equating the prevention of terror with terror itself, so that interdiction is seen as reprisal – and a distorted-numbers game, in which the only deaths that count in a violent conflict are one side's "martyrdoms" – since the other side's deaths are deserved.

The most flagrant Big Lie is the Arab assertion that there was never a Jewish presence in Palestine until modern times.

The most flagrant example of the Big Lie is the Arab assertion that there was never a Jewish presence in Palestine until modern times. The evidence of a Jewish civilization going back more than two millennia is overwhelmingly borne out in the archaeology of the region. The heritage of the Jews in Palestine is documented in the records of the peoples who prevailed against them, and not least in the annals of Muslim chroniclers. It is engraved in Rome's Arch of Titus depicting the captive Hebrews being brought to Rome after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. What brought Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine, to the Holy Land in the fourth century A.D., was the search for relics of Christ, who preached as a Jew in the very Hebrew Temple whose existence the Arabs deny and whose Wall they appropriate as their own.

Genocide

Turning the history of the Jews against them is another commonplace of anti-Semitism. If the Jews were victims in an actual genocide, what better way to transfer sympathy from them to their rivals than by painting them as modern Nazis, and their policies as a new holocaust? Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior. The Israelis – who employed a third of the Palestinian population, armed the Palestinian Authority and offered Yasser Arafat a state consisting of 95 percent of the West Bank – were hardly practicing genocide. Israel, however, is now sustaining a war for its own existence. A nation defending its citizens against terrorist bombings, mortar assaults, sniper attacks, and a military and diplomatic onslaught by an array of Arab foes is practicing survival, not genocide.

Apartheid

Equally damning is the collateral charge of "apartheid," which tars Israel with the brush of the truly racist former regime in South Africa, and further equates Palestinians with the blacks suffering white colonial domination. Since apartheid – keeping people apart – can only be practiced within a sovereign state, the only analogy would have to be made not with the Palestinians, but with the Israeli Arabs. And what is their condition? Yes, there is still some degree of discrimination, but Israeli Arabs have more political rights than any other Arabs in the Middle East – including their compatriots in the Palestinian Authority. And, whatever their grievances, they are still economically better off than the majority of their fellows in virtually every other Arab country. If they still face inequality it is because of the mutual hostility and mistrust between both communities, not because of race.

Beyond Israel's borders, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza involves a military occupation amid urban guerrilla warfare, analogous to the British security measures in Northern Island, that hopefully will end with a cease-fire and a Palestinian state. This is unfortunate, it is tragic, but it is not apartheid – and to call it so is to deliberately distort language for political advantage.

Avoid Context and Specifics

Which brings us to a corollary tactic: Avoid context and specifics; whenever possible, generalize and keep repeating the generalization. Blowing up houses and tearing down olive groves and keeping people locked in their communities is horrendous – in peacetime, but not in the context of an urban guerrilla war. When many of these towns have sent out suicide bombers, when the houses have served as hilltop redoubts to fire incessantly and indiscriminately into Jewish communities, and when the orchards have served as cover for snipers – they become legitimate targets. When Arab apologists wring their hands over an Israeli military incursion, they never mention what the Israelis are reacting to, or else diminish and distort it. A fair observer only has to ask: "If there is violence, who profits?"

Settlers

Two other word distortions often used together are "colonial" and "settler," conjuring up images of whites exploiting indigenous populations in Africa. But the truth is that Jews are not part of a European ruling class imposed on helpless natives, but are caught up in a tragedy in which two peoples are struggling for the same piece of land. Jewish and Palestinian nationalism are virtually contemporaneous, and grew out of the disruptions that created new national movements from the ruins of the old empires – including the Ottoman Empire.

As for settlements, the matter of borders for the new Palestinian state was one of the issues to be determined by negotiations over the final status of the West Bank territory to which Jordan renounced its claim. For the Palestinians to assume that all of this is their sovereign territory – before there is even a sovereign Palestine, and before a final status agreement – is a unilateral end run around serious negotiations. Nor should it go unremarked that in the heated rhetoric of Arab polemics, all Israelis are indiscriminately lumped together as settlers. The developing agenda of the Palestinians – which Hamas makes no secret of trumpeting – is that Israel is a foreign implant in the heart of the Islamic world, and all of its citizens are settlers – usurpers who must be disgorged, however long it takes.

The only potential genocide in play here is not that of the Palestinians, but that of the Jews. The West should understand that the intifada is being driven ever more by the religious fanatics of Hamas – with whom Arafat has increasingly made common cause – whose goals are not only destructive to Israel, but inimical to the West, as the recent terror attacks on New York and Washington have made clear. The radicalization of the Palestinian cause is fueled not by the secular Left, but by Muslim zealots whose aim is not to achieve a democratic Palestine, but to impose an Islamic theocracy akin to that of their Iranian sponsors.

While Muslims may insist that the zealotry of Hezbollah and the Taliban are not representative of Islam, it has now been made chillingly clear that this intolerant strain of the faith is on the ascendancy, claiming the allegiance of up to 15 percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. For many, the religious movement has become a political ideology which is totalitarian, anti-democratic, violent, and terroristic. Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is one of its primary targets. It is not the last outpost of colonialism, but the first bulwark of democracy.

The Right of Return

One of the most effective acts of Arab topsy-turvy has been harnessing Israel's concept of "the right of return" to the Palestinian agenda. A response to centuries of persecution, this right was fostered by Israel to offer a haven to Jews in the Diaspora who had heretofore lacked a refuge. It was granted by a sovereign state and obtained exclusively within its borders. The Palestinian mockery of this process is to "invite" half a million compatriots, not back to their own burgeoning state, but to another country – Israel.

Imagine the absurdity of India inviting millions of Hindus back to their pre-partition homes in Pakistan.

Imagine if India were to "invite" millions of Hindus back to their pre-partition homes in Pakistan. The idea would be absurd. It would destabilize the Muslim nation (which is exactly what the Palestinians have in mind for the state of Israel by insisting on this "right"). The world has yet to insist on returning the three million Sudetan Germans to the Czech Republic, or on the mass repatriation of any civilian population unmoored in the global turmoil that followed World War II – with only one exception: Israel.

(It might be noted that the 1948 General Assembly Resolution 194 so often cited by Arabs, according the Palestinians the right of return, stipulates that the refugees must be willing "to live at peace with their neighbors." Given the climate of hatred, violence, and revanchism ubiquitous in the refugee camps, the likelihood of meeting this requirement is nil.)

Why does Israel have to pay a price higher than any other nation in this context? One of the tenets of anti-Semitism over the centuries has been a reverse exceptionalism in which Jews are judged more harshly for acting like everyone else.

Israeli Leaders as War Criminals

Naturally, a criminal nation must be led by a war criminal, and so it is not surprising that the Arabs – with help from their European friends – have decried Israel's premier as such. It is now a given in these circles that Ariel Sharon has blood on his hands, and that he was responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982.

People may have forgotten by now that the killings were actually done by Maronite Christians known as the Lebanese Forces. Many of them came from the Christian town of Damour, where hundreds of people had been massacred by Palestinians who attacked and destroyed the town six years earlier. This was part of a bloody civil war in Lebanon – in which the PLO played a brutal, and perhaps seminal, role – with massacres and counter-reprisals that had gone on for years before the Israelis ever arrived. At the time, the Palestinians had set up a quasi-state-within-a-state in Lebanon, informed by terror, intimidation, and corruption, and led by none other than Yasser Arafat. Yet there appears to be no great enthusiasm in Belgium to try him as a war criminal.

The world may also have forgotten that what triggered the Sabra massacre was the Syrian-sponsored terrorist explosion that killed Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel, head of the Phalangist party and a Palestinian foe, along with 21 other party and militia officials. To be sure, Sharon's forces should have intervened earlier, and accordingly he was forced by Israel's own Kahan Commission to resign as defense minister. But failing to prevent a massacre is a far cry from perpetrating one. Why then is Sharon being held up to standards to which no others are held accountable? If the U.N. is interested in examining ethnic cleansing, it should begin with the PLO atrocities in Damour – whose survivors cannot remind us of what happened, since Lebanon itself is under the occupation of Syria (itself no timid nation when it comes to mass murder, as it demonstrated in the massacre of 20,000 Muslim fundamentalists in Hama).

And, indeed, if the world wants to accuse someone of a crime for the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, it can prosecute Elie Hobeika, the leader of the Phalangist forces who perpetrated the massacre after his own people were slaughtered by the Palestinians. He currently resides in Lebanon under the protection of the Syrians. No one seems interested in putting him in the dock.

Palestinian Ministry of Truth

Palestinian ideology has become a lethal cocktail of radical nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism. In its Islamist mode it is remorseless in its exhortations to drive the Jews into the sea, and revert all of Palestine to a Muslim trust; in its secular form it has adopted Frantz Fanon's maxims that "truth is that which hurries on the breakup of the colonial regime," and that "the good is quite simply that which is evil for them."

The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges.

Consequently, Palestinian propagandists can say and do anything they please without concern for the truth, in the belief that if they repeat it often enough it will simply become the truth. Thus, Arab propagandists ask: "In the current political climate, what is the worst thing of which we can accuse the Jews?" The answer: Racism, Apartheid. Genocide. Colonialism. Is it true? It doesn't matter. Let the Jews worry about whether it's true. The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.

It is not surprising that some pro-Taliban Pakistanis are now complaining because the U.S. failed to put Israel on its target list of terrorism. The goal is to vitiate the meanings of words so that, in the subsequent confusion, the onus is taken off the perpetrators and equivalence placed on the victims. We have entered an Orwellian realm in which the Palestinian Authority has created its own Ministry of Truth, with a vociferous global bully pulpit. It's a world where a conference on racial tolerance is turned into a hate rally, where mass murder is called martyrdom, where people who indulge in lynching complain about persecution, in which accusations of Israeli disrespect are made by Palestinians whose airwaves and newspapers and pulpits are rife with obscene, anti-Semitic venom, in which condemnations of Zionism are conflated with attacks on the Jewish people so that there is no longer a distinction between the Palestinian movement's professed anti-Zionism and its rampant anti-Semitism.

What is at the heart of the Islamist assault on the Zionist project is not the issue of national rights, but the humiliation engendered by a formerly subject people ruling where Muslims once held sway. This can only be eradicated by subjugating the offenders and restoring them to their humble status. It explains why the Islamists no longer bother to distinguish between attacking Zionists and Jews. In their worldview, the Israelis, by their nation's very existence, are committing blasphemy.

We have seen in the last century that it is possible for virtually an entire society to be seized with a fury that causes unfathomable harm until it abates. For the Palestinians – awash in self-righteousness, disdainful of compromise, and convinced of their ultimate victory – to indulge in this marriage of delusion and triumphalism, is one thing. For their Arab sponsors to abet them is, regrettably, also understandable. But what of the West?

How do we explain the daily diet of distorted coverage, vilification of Israel, and conflation of its sins with anti-Semitic imagery in mainstream European newspapers such as the Guardian in England (which has editorialized on its front page that "the international community cannot indefinitely support the very high cost in human rights and human lives" of the establishment of Israel), Le Monde in France (which suggested that the Jews themselves were responsible for the Tel Aviv disco bombing), and the Spanish press (where it is now open season on anti-Semitic caricatures of hook-nosed Jews wearing yarmulkes, imagery of swastikas inside Stars of David, and editorials equating Israelis with Nazis)?

Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism

The answer may reside in a new strain of politically correct anti-Semitism. Forty years of indoctrinating an elite on a diet of post-colonialism, racism, and class, have paid bizarre dividends. Worse still, a historically challenged generation more impressed by images than analysis, impelled by a herd instinct, and easily manipulated by a simplistic David & Goliath show, is now reporting from the Middle East. Add to this a growing cluster of Europeans who feel that enough reparations have been paid to the Jews and their lawyers – the sectors who traditionally have never cared too much for Jews anyway – and the Left in whose gun sights the Jews were re-targeted from class enemy to colonial enemy.

Add to them the old-fashioned patrician elites, who still considered Jews unwashed and pushy (and, oh yes, arrogant) and were never comfortable with them running their own state. To this combustible fuel, add the match of the growing Islamist rancor in the West, and we have the makings of a new conflagration of anti-Semitism. Aside from rabid Islamists, no one who wishes to be taken seriously can publicly say anything bad about the old Jews of Europe – most of whom are gone – without sounding like reactionary troglodytes. But many can transcend the problem by embracing the cause of Palestinian rights.

By identifying with a post-colonial liberation movement, they can be ideologically fashionable, in favor of the downtrodden, against oppression, supportive of an even-handed approach in diplomacy, applauded by the Third World, and insulated from the charge of anti-Semitism – because how can anyone who is against racism (in its Zionist form) be an anti-Semite?

As noted at the outset, every age begets the anti-Semitism that most suits it; and in this era of anti-racist enthusiasm, it is anti-Zionism. In all ages, the goal of the anti-Semitic project is to delegitimize Jews. In this one, it's to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state, as a prelude to its ultimate destruction. The "fairness" that Palestinian supporters advocate has the ultimate goal of sufficiently weakening Israel that it will be unable to defend itself. And without a Jewish state, the iron truth of history is that the Jewish people sooner or later become even more vulnerable to the next wave of anti-Semitism.

The metaphor of Exodus is one that has dogged the Jews from the outset. Their very success attracts resentment – as they learned in Egypt where, according to Scripture, a new king arose "who did not know Joseph." The issue is no longer, Will there be a Palestinian state – that is inevitable – but rather, Will there be a Jewish one? The disappearance of the Jewish state will not mean the disappearance of anti-Semitism – quite the opposite.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., addressed his listeners with the following words: "You declare that you do not hate Jews, you are merely anti-Zionist. And I say, let the truth ring forth from high on the mountaintops... When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews... What is anti-Zionism? It is the denial of the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the globe.'' Dr. King, who recognized bias when he saw it, knew what he was talking about.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 30

(30)
J. CHALEFF,
May 1, 2005 12:00 AM

WONDERFUL

WITH 50 PAGES OF FOOTNOTES THIS COULD BE A PhD THESIS. WHAT A WONDERFUL WORK IN BOTH HISTORY AND LOGIC.

(29)
Leah Diamond,
April 17, 2004 12:00 AM

Here I am running across this most powerful, well-written article a year and a half after it was published. As an American and an Israeli my opinion is Jack Schwartz is badly needed to provide more "worldwide" writing on behalf of Jews everywhere. A real honor to read his work.

(28)
Anonymous,
May 10, 2002 12:00 AM

Right is might.

I am not Jewish but I've resolved to fight anti-Semetism whereever I come across it. The work of correcting lies over and over again may seem like thankless work, but should never be thought of as having merely to "explain away the charges". Think of this work as rather extremely important warfare, as fighting the venomous lies of hatred and evil with the weapons of purity of honesty and TRUTH. Repeat and defeat. Repeat and defeat. The lies are based on NOTHING so they have no substance -- dust they are and to dust they shall return. But the lies cannot and must not be ignored!!!!

(27)
Anonymous,
April 21, 2002 12:00 AM

What is to be done

with ref to the presant israeli/arab conflict
I Was absolutly astounded by the strength and vigour of the arab propogand machine in the UK media
The BBC and ITN news broadcasts were always biased iagainst israel ndeed they even did subliminal propogand
and the uk government does nothing to stop it
In my opinion the arabs are trying to suvbert Europe by backdoor methods of bribary and coruption in the highest places of goverment and do not intend to undretake terrorist acts in europe so as not to anatgoinse them and to split them from the USA
Am I correct in this analysis

(26)
Anonymous,
April 5, 2002 12:00 AM

Arab propagandists borrow from dangerous Nazi propagandist, Goebbels.

I found this article persuasive, well-thought out, passionate, and upsetting. As a Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, I feel afraid for my people in this new wave of antisemitism flooding not only the Arab world, but also Europe and America. The power of propaganda is fierce; unfortunately it always seems to be against the Jews. I wonder if the so-called "Land of Milk and Honey" had been blessed with oil, whether the European community would be more sympathetic to the Israelis. Anti-semitism and oil make seductive bedfellows. The only cause of action for the Israelis (and Jews everywhere) is to keep fighting the good fight and do not stop. To quote Dylan Thomas: "Do not go gently into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light."

(25)
Anonymous,
January 7, 2002 12:00 AM

Held to a higher standard--where to go from here?

I think it would be excellent if human beliefs and behaviors could be examined without any labels whatsoever. Once people see "labels" they take short-cuts in thinking, or stop thinking altogether. This is a good article, but after reading it, one gets the idea that by disagreeing with Jews one becomes an heretics or antisemetic, by definition; and, of course, that is not the point of the article; rather, that is the bottom-line result of hate propoganda, when people dismiss the issue as a foregone conclusion. This is one problem of trying to combat labels placed on people, all people.
How do people step outside of their history? (Or, not let it dictate their future)? In other words, how do people see people as people, not just as symbols in the psychodrama of life played out from a script?
The best part of this article is that it makes the reader re-think his/her own reactions to headlines and one-liners we hear in the news, and to see the participants in this struggle, both sides, as people, not just as symbols in a psychological melodrama, where the last one who speaks (the loudest) must be the one who is in the right: I call this the big-media-lie.
I've seen children and young people from Palestine interviewed on TV, and the simplistic view they hold is well described in this article. My question is, how does one get beyond the comfort zone of prejudice (thinking only my side is right) on both sides, and see the human suffering of each side?

(24)
Mohammed Othman,
January 6, 2002 12:00 AM

You might be saying what you think, but the truth is so much far from it

You don't really watch TV do you?? or may be all what you see is the the jewish oriented news, which would only show you what the poor palestinians threw of stones. Or you make your self blind when, not hundreds, but thousands die every year. Or may be you consider them as rats, and yourself as kings. Now what kind of humanitarian acions are these. To be fair as you claim, at least list my response on the page, ok?just show what I wrote! At least so that you give the people to read from other sources and restrict themselves to the anastaeting views of yours. detail any thing
With sympathy to all those palestinians that are being tortured while I am writing this letter.

Hashem is trying to tell us something and is using the Arabs, etc. as the whip to force us to do Teshuvah. The Arabs may have chosen (bechirah) to do it, so they are not blameless, but we have to recognize that Hashem directs it all.
The article doesn't mention Hashem *at all*. Israel was formed to allow us to safely be Jewish but live as a Goy (that's Tel Aviv for you). Hashem has given us modern technology so that the land can't quite so easily vomit us out. So the Arabs try to do it for Him.

This article simply turns us into victims and thus denies Hashem. Shame on Aish for publishing a non-Torah view.

(22)
,
January 2, 2002 12:00 AM

Dear Mr. Jack Swartz:

The article named above is an excellent article thanks. Thank you for all your efforts. As soon as I began to read it, I did not want to stop. I forward it to all and forward it to one friend whose comment was "the language was hard for her to forward it to many people who cannot understand many words there. She wished this could be summarized to serve all the people, especially the mass Arabs, these days and the mass European, American, and the rest of world.

As for me, I enjoyed reading every word of it. I am grateful. Well documented document. I document for the history books. Factual.

Rachel Neuwirth
Los Angeles

(21)
Leo Besser,
January 2, 2002 12:00 AM

The Right of Israel to exist is fundamental

I agree with all that is in this article. Jews around the world have the right to thier security no matter where they live. As a Jew I support the nation of Israel as a homeland for Jews but also believe that the United States of America is also the "Promised Land". Every nation on earth is a "Promised Land" if the citizen desire it so.

Were I in charge of the situation in Israel I would impose the laws of the land on all of its citizens. Any person in the world who does not want to live in peace with the sovern nation of Israel has the right to go anywhere it pleases them to live in peace. Peace does not come and does not mean that you can take what is recognized throughout the civilized world as a sovern nation just because of some twisted defination of a twisted mind of an over religous individual. If the non-Jews of the region do not like the laws of the land, then they can as free spirits go where they can find the peace and security they desire.

What is happening in Israel because of the Arabs and Muslems of the region would be like any citizen or group of citizens deciding the the ranch on which the President of the United States has established his homestead is no longer his but instead theirs and are determined to take posession of it even if they have to kill President Bush and all of his relatives to get it.

When the world thinks you are wrong, chances are you are wrong, the same as when you think the world is wrong the chances are still that you are the one who is wrong. The whole world cannot be out of step.

(20)
muray gorelick,
January 1, 2002 12:00 AM

these facts should be sent to every newspaper

All pulishers of History Books should have these fact to include in there new or revised world history books.They devote about 1.4 page to what Judism has given to the world.

(19)
Tim Johnson,
January 1, 2002 12:00 AM

anti-Iarael equals anti-semitism: why?

I obviously have joined the unwashed masses by failing to see why disagreeing with the monstrous inequities perpetrated on the Palestinians by Israel makes me an anti-semite.

Since when does disagreement with Israel's foreign policies make me an anti-semite to Jews living in Australia or anywhere else?

This kind of blanket generalizing is exactly the broad-bush painting that
teachers always warned us against.
I'm allyed to Hitler if I criticise Sharon's
numbingly counterproductive policies.

Oh well.

(18)
Robert Blau,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

Kudos

This is a superlative piece of writing. Kudos to the author for pushing back against the worldwide onslaught of bull on this subject.

(17)
Leslie Satenstein,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

A most apt description

I am not a political scientist, nor a militant, but I am seeing an ever increasing propaganda compaign to paint we Jews as mongers. Why are we blamed from protecting our borders and lands?

(16)
YOSEPH ROSENBAUM,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

On target analysis. Now action is required!

Now that the threat has been presented to us in such a compelling manner, a course of action must be determined.

A Torah Jew believes that everything is directed by G-D. This must be our wake up call to TESHUVA, Tefilla and Tzedakah.

Without these necessary ingredients, I am afraid there is nothing we can do. Unfortunately, we saw in WWII how little influence we really have against the world. And we also experienced first hand how little trust we can place in our so called "friends".

(15)
,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

An Article that Sums it up today.

So, thorogh, so enlightening and right on target. Great, great article. Thank you so so much.

(14)
seymour miller,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

we need to educate the world

we should inform the world by good explations how few jews there are in the world and what goodness they have brought to the worlds populaion and how abuse they are by the ignorent majority

(13)
Anonymous,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

excellent article

thank you for this articulate, intelligent, dispassionate analysis of the many confusing threads of this tangle that makes up modern "progressive" attitudes toward Israel. You have said it all so very well. The pain and outrage underneath your straightforward analysis has not prevented you from laying it all out for us. I will copy this article and send it around to my "progressive" friends and relatives. But tragically when they see the source they'll probably be unable to read it clearly. Such is the power of propogranda, even among Jews, relatively naive, young, and influenced by their "progressive" professors as they are.

(12)
B. W. Matthews,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

Interesting !

Given my inability to walk and chew gum simultaneously it will take a bit of time to properly digets all the information you present. Still, my hope is you'll continue with factual and insightful analysis of this very important situation that affects all, jews and gentiles alike, regardless of the provocation such facts may present to some. Thank you.

(11)
Sylvia Dobson,
December 31, 2001 12:00 AM

Israel needs to be strong against her enemies

A very interesting article, and one that non-jews would do well to heed. I am a Christian deeply committed to fully supporting Israel against her foes. It is about time the world in general showed Israel and the Jews that support. Everytime I see Yasser Arafat utter the same old lies I feel like vomiting. How can people believe that evil man and his cohorts? Easy, when you think that his uncle, a former Mufti of Jerusalem, was a nazi supporter who followed and befriended the likes of Hitler.

Just to let all my jewish friends that I will do all in my power to defend Israel against the tirade of lies spouted against her by the PLO, Hamas and the rest, and seek to counter the misinformation propagated in the press.

Shalom.

(10)
Irving Lerner,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

I do not have the skill to summarize this article in one line

Everyone needs to read this article, not just we jews. I will forward this article to everyone I know

(9)
Anonymous,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

Wow!

A comprehensive writing, quite excellent, but a bit too long.

(8)
Peter O'Connor,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

It's gut-wrenching to realise the West is abandoning Israel and supporting the 'Palistinian' cause and state.'

Why is the US State Dept so hypocritical? They tell Israel to meet their terrorists at the negotiating table while they get to meet their own on the battlefield.

(7)
,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

This piece requires wide distribution in the (USA) press.

Mr Schwartz's article is frighteningly and alarmingly true. How does one obtain permission to e-mail it to my local newspaper.

(6)
Miles Herman,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

Remain ever vigilant!

We, all of us, must remain vigilant in our efforts to educate and convince those who are so easily (and often wrongfully) influenced, due to whatever reason ... Particularly poignant in this article was the description by Schwartz of today's journalists as "historically challenged." Likely a truism, and one that applies to a good many of the present day World populace. An example: I live in a community on the Atlantic Coast of Massachusetts. Most of my neighbors have no idea where the countries of the World are situated on the globe, never mind a comprehensive knowledge of World events that occurred prior to yesterday! I mean [literally] "yesterday!" The historical truth as well as accurate coverage of current events must be brought to those, many like most of my neighbors, who vote policy makers into office in the US. As we know, much of foreign policy resides in the Executive branch of government. However, many members of congress are quite able to exert influence in certain matters. Those who vote in this country must make certain that intelligent and informed foreign policy considerations are embraced by the candidates they support. Yes, we who care about the truth and the Jewish people MUST remain ever vigilant.

(5)
Robert Cherry,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

Jack Schwarts make some interesting point but I don't accept everything he says.

Referring to Prime Minister Sharron, he says "But failing to prevent a massacre is a far cry from perpetrating one". I disagree. I believe that we Jews are held to a higher standard of behavior ("You shall be a light unto the nations.") What kind of democracy forces a minister to resign in such circumstances but allows him to run for political office again?

I believe, to some extent, the Israelis have encouraged anti-semitism. Why have successive governments encouraged the settlers more than 30 years after the Israelis conquered the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip? Who in their right mind would want to move to a place where it is necessary to live in an armed camp because the people who live nearby hate them?

Finally, I no longer accept the Israeli Government's contention that they are just defending themselves. When an Israeli helicopter fires a projectile that kills the occupants of a car containing a suspected Palestinian terrorist and one or more civilians (sometimes a child) dies because he was nearby, I call that second degree murder. All of the "We deeply regret" statements from the Israeli Government spokeman do not bring the civilian back to life.

Many who read my comments may not agree with me. I was brought up by a Jewish mother who told me that two wrongs don't make one right.

(4)
mido elsayed,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

The truth is defferent

All the sophistry of this article may cheat the world public opinion but it doesn't cheat the people who are living the crises..first anti-semitism was elimnated since the end of the second world war and nazism died with Hitler and the Arabs cannot be blamed for anti-semitism for simple reason:the Arabs are semists!! this is the first lie which you are telling,second: racism against Arabs is not just result of Arabic probaganda (which is very weak and not effective relative to jewish probaganda)
it is a fact beeing proved every day by Israel ,Israel is clever in playing the role of victim .when the talks faild Israel realizes that there is nothing to do ,so it decided to use force against the plastenian civilians how?? by making them revolute ..and the best way to making them angry is to hurt their religious feelings .that's why Sharon went suddenly to the Farthest mosque with hundreds of jew soldirs .
the second entefada started as a result of what the palastenians feel 2 or 3 years ago.and as usual Israel faced this entefada usin the worst way of killing and toturing civilians and made people belive that the Israeli way is a reaction of revolution and this is the repeated game which Israel knows how to play since Nataniaho.
Israel says that the palasteians are terrorists well, what is the definition of terrorism? attacking civilian?? Israel attacked palastenian civilians and killed hundreds of them it een attacked thr palastenian schools ith F16 planes and killed big number of children,but it tried to make the world accept that with the help of the American biased probaganda..s it hard to belive?? why the America use Veto o prevent sending observers to the palastenian lands to see,and tell the world the truth??!!
the united nation's organization didn't accept the Israeli crimes against the palastenians but these crimes are contnuous against them under American protwction .

(3)
JULIUS ROMANOFF,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

Zionism is Racism

I found Schwartz's article detailed and almost like an attorney's brief listing point by point the lies and distortions being published about Israel and the PLO. However, it should be stated "The complaint that having the state of Israel exist on land Arabs claim is theirs, and should be driven into the sea" is aparthoidism and racism by definition. Only true believers can live on this land. Why hasn't this been said? Is it because the need for oil by the Western world makes it political suicide to speak out the truth? OPEC is a monopoly, and no one opposes them. We know the world is not fair to all, but there is a limit to distorting facts.

(2)
Anonymous,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

prophetic article

Just as the onslaught of past anti-semitism brought on times of intense turmoil for the Jewish people, I fear that the international anti-semitism exposed in this article may be a harbinger of horrendous turmoil. We must all cling to G-d as a people, and drop all allegiances that come before Him. Unity is the only answer.

(1)
Anonymous,
December 30, 2001 12:00 AM

this is the truth but who's listening?

I agree with everything said above, but the author is already "preaching to the converted" with me. The rest of the world needs to hear this message, but how? How to get past the anti-Jewish sentiment in the western media (e.g., AP, etc.)? More, how to get past the internalized anti-Semitism of secular Jews, which makes them vulnerable to Arab and European lies and denigration of Jews? Hashem should grant that the truth be revealed clearly to all the world, with mercy and just punishment for our enemies, in our days.

My nephew is having his bar mitzvah and I am thinking of a gift. In the old days, the gift of choice was a fountain pen, then a Walkman, and today an iPod. But I want to get him something special. What do you suggest?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Since this event celebrates the young person becoming obligated in the commandments, the most appropriate gift is, naturally, one that gives a deeper understanding of the Jewish heritage and enables one to better perform the mitzvot! (An iPod, s/he can get anytime.)

With that in mind, my favorite gift idea is a tzedakah (charity) box. Every Jew should have a tzedakah box in his home, so he can drop in change on a regular basis. The money can then be given to support a Jewish school or institution -- in your home town or in Israel (every Jews’ “home town”). There are beautiful tzedakah boxes made of wood and silver, and you can see a selection here.

For boys, a really beautiful gift is a pair of tefillin, the black leather boxes which contain parchments of Torah verses, worn on the bicep and the head. Owning a pair of Tefillin (and wearing them!) is an important part of Jewish identity. But since they are expensive (about $400), not every Bar Mitzvah boy has a pair. To make sure you get kosher Tefillin, see here.

In 1944, the Nazis perpetrated the Children's Action in the Kovno Ghetto. That day and the next, German soldiers conducted house-to-house searches to round up all children under age 12 (and adults over 55) -- and sent them to their deaths at Fort IX. Eventually, the Germans blew up every house with grenades and dynamite, on suspicion that Jews might be in hiding in underground bunkers. They then poured gasoline over much of the former ghetto and incinerated it. Of the 37,000 Jews in Kovno before the Holocaust, less than 10 percent survived. One of the survivors was Rabbi Ephraim Oshri, who later published a stirring collection of rabbinical responsa, detailing his life-and-death decisions during the Holocaust. Also on this date, in 1937, American Jews held a massive anti-Nazi rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden.

In a letter to someone who found it difficult to study Torah, the 20th century sage the Chazon Ish wrote:

"Some people find it hard to be diligent in their Torah studies. But the difficulty persists only for a short while - if the person sincerely resolves to submerge himself in his studies. Very quickly the feelings of difficulty will go away and he will find that there is no worldly pleasure that can compare with the pleasure of studying Torah diligently."

Although actions generally have much greater impact than thoughts, thoughts may have a more serious effect in several areas.

The distance that our hands can reach is quite limited. The ears can hear from a much greater distance, and the reach of the eye is much farther yet. Thought, however, is virtually limitless in its reach. We can think of objects millions of light years away, and so we have a much greater selection of improper thoughts than of improper actions.

Thought also lacks the restraints that can deter actions. One may refrain from an improper act for fear of punishment or because of social disapproval, but the privacy of thought places it beyond these restraints.

Furthermore, thoughts create attitudes and mindsets. An improper action creates a certain amount of damage, but an improper mindset can create a multitude of improper actions. Finally, an improper mindset can numb our conscience and render us less sensitive to the effects of our actions. We therefore do not feel the guilt that would otherwise come from doing an improper act.

We may not be able to avoid the occurrence of improper impulses, but we should promptly reject them and not permit them to dwell in our mind.

Today I shall...

make special effort to avoid harboring improper thoughts.

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